The present invention relates to an electrical connector and, in particular, to a card connector used for connection of a printed circuit board with a card, such as an IC card, a smart card, a PCMCIA card and an expansion card for an intelligent terminal such as a personal computer, a PDA (personal digital assistant), or a digital camera.
A known card connector, which is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Utility Model Unexamined Publication No. 55258/1993 (JP-U-5 55258) is an one-piece type and comprises a U-shaped insulator. The U-shaped insulator has a pair of guides opposite to each other to form a slot for receiving a card therein. The card has a mating connector and is inserted into the slot through an open front end of the U-shaped insulator. Those guides are provided with guide groove to be of U-shaped cross section, and are located opposite to each other. Pin contacts are mounted on the U-shaped insulator at a rear end portion opposite to the open front end and are brought into contact with the mating connector in the card inserted into the slot. The connector further included an ejector mechanism to eject the card from connection with the contacts. The ejector mechanism comprises an ejector rod slidably mounted on a side of the U-shaped insulator and a lever pivotally mounted on an upper surface of the rear end portion of the U-shaped insulator. The lever has a connected portion at one end thereof connected one end of the ejector rod and an engaging portion at the opposite end thereof for engaging with an edge of a card inserted into the slot. When the ejector rod is moved rearward, the lever is rotated and frontward pushes the card held in the slot to eject the card.
In this known connector, the U-shaped insulator has a pivot integrally formed into one body. The lever has a small hole in which the pivot is inserted. Then, a top end of the pivot is deformed mechanically or thermally to rotatably fix the lever onto the pivot. Therefore, a special jig is necessary for assembling the lever onto the U-shaped insulator. Furthermore, the connector does not have sufficient mechanical strength.
Further, a card supporting member or a frame for supporting the card comprises the opposite guides of substantially U-shaped cross section and, is small in the rigidity. Therefore, when the ejector rod mounted on one of the opposite guides is operated to eject the card in the slot, the frame is deformed. In consequence, the card cannot be easily removed from the slot. Furthermore, the card connector it self is relatively large and heavy. This makes it impossible to mount the card connector onto a printed circuit board by use of an automatic mounting machine.
Another known card connector is a two-piece type and comprises a base portion and an ejector portion. The base portion comprises a U-shaped insulator having the similar opposite guides and a plurality of contacts fixedly mounted at a rear portion thereof. The ejector portion comprises parts for the ejector mechanism such as the ejector rod and the lever, and a support supporting the ejector mechanism. The base portion is previously mounted onto the printed circuit board and then the ejector portion is mounted and assembled onto the base portion. Since the base portion is comparatively small in weight, it is possible to mount the card connector onto the printed circuit board by use of the automatic mounting machine.
However, the two-piece card connector still has a problem that the mounting operation by use of the automatic mounting machine is difficult because the base portion is relatively large in size and weight.
In the two-piece card connector, the lever is also pivoted at a pivot position onto the support and, therefore, comprises two lever portions at both sides of the pivot position, first one having the connected portion at the end connected to the ejector lever while the other or second one having the engaging portion at the opposite end for engaging with the card. If the second lever portion is formed relatively long, a force acts to urge the front side thereof in contact with the card upward, while the rear side not in contact with the card is urged downward. Consequently, the second lever portion is deformed. This may make it difficult to use the connector.